A Phlaming Phoenix

I really dislike superhero movies in general, especially this non-stop Marvel/DC stuff, and a primary reason for that is the way they tend to go in and out of live action and animation. There’s an uncanny valley thing that happens in that transition, and you can obviously still tell that large portions of the live action stuff is shot on a greenscreen. It all looks fake as a result. My suspension of disbelief is shattered.

But when a movie like this admits it’s animated, things improve a lot. I watched the first Spiderverse movie the other day with my kid, and I absolutely loved the art style. I had other problems with the movie, but the visual style was not one of them. I wish there were more animated movies targeting older audiences with unique art direction like that.

Do you recommend a particular instance?

I don’t want thinner. I want more functionality. Don’t expect me to pay 2 grand for a laptop with no external USB or HDMI ports, for which privileges I can pay an additional $100 or so. I’m frustrated enough by the lack of Ethernet jacks on my Lenovo. The last time I had a Mac (work shipped me one), I was even more frustrated by how bad the built in trackpad and keyboard were and the fact that using an external device to replace them came at a premium price.

The article quotes extensively from the study about this and gives examples regarding what kinds of tasks qualify for those levels.

There was a post here a while back about how younger generations often don’t understand concepts like file system structures because concepts like that (which are still relevant in a lot of contexts) have been largely stripped out of modern user interfaces. If your primary computing device is a cell phone, a task like “make a nested directory structure and move this file to the deepest part of it” is a foreign concept.

I guess my point here is that I agree with yours about this being cyclical in a sense. I feel crippled on a cell phone, but I’m also in my comfort zone on a Linux terminal. Using web apps like MS Teams is often difficult for me because their UIs are not things I’m comfortable with. I don’t tend to like default layouts and also tend to use advanced features which are usually hidden away behind a few menus. Tools built to meet my needs specifically would largely not meet the needs of most users. A Level 1 user would probably have a better experience there than a Level 3 like me. It’s hard (maybe impossible) to do UX design that satisfies everyone.

Been getting my Elden Ring game into position for the DLC.

No, I think it implies that they’re normally body swapped, and it’s weird that they aren’t for a day.

Yeah I just familiarize myself with the city I live in.

“Sorry for the confusion. Taylor uses they/them pronouns.”

Confusion lifted, problem solved.

And also because when people try to use neopronouns they take as much flak for that if not more. Imagine this same argument: “I’m not used to these newfangled pronouns. Why can’t they just use normal ones?”

Mine uses SMS 2FA AND had a 16-character password limit. I need to switch banks already. Any suggestions for a decent bank or credit union that uses modern password cryptography and app-based TOTP?

I tip for delivery as well. OP is taking about takeout, where I have to drive to the place and pick it up myself.

I agree that in an effort to be as inclusive as possible we have created a completely unmarketable acronym. That matters because we are still having to defend our very existence to a lot of people whose bigotry is being gathered up and weaponized politically against us.

I use the term “queer” to describe myself because my sexual identity (which is something like bisexual or pansexual) and my neurodivergence have made me something of a cultural outcast throughout most of my life. I don’t really “fit in” with most people, and “queer” describes that experience pretty succinctly.

To the person you are responding to, I am cautious about using this word too broadly because some people have specific trauma around this word. Bigots often wield the word like a weapon, so people who are subjected to that and don’t have adequate supports to deal with that trauma can get offended by it. I don’t think we should so flippantly dismiss that. It works for me. It doesn’t work for others.

Do we know they delete the data when you do that? A lot of software is designed to “soft delete” data, where you mark the record with a “deleted” flag that excludes it from future queries. This data still lingers in the database and would still be accessible by anyone who can bypass the application logic, such as someone with a direct DB connection and read privileges.

Grand Ole Party, an old moniker, but I’m unsure of its origin.

Gay sex is literally twice as manly as straight sex, at a minimum. Just saying.

The article asks what is the politically neutral answer to the question of whether a trans woman is a woman. I wonder why this is a political question at all. Send like a question for scientists - biologists and sociologists and such. Seems they have achieved something like a consensus on the matter. I don’t see anything inherently political about that, except that folks of a certain political bent have made it political. It’s not a matter of “what do we do in public policy about trans people” but “fascists refuse to accept trans people in society and have decided to lambast and punish them”.

In case my position isn’t obvious, trans people are people and trans rights are human rights. If there wasn’t a group of people trying to make them into a second class group of citizens (or a group of “eradicated vermin”) we wouldn’t be having a political conversation about this at all.

It takes my kid half an hour of screaming and throwing a public fit just to get within two miles of a needle, so I’ll take it.

The research at the time said not to ban it because it is reasonably safe for consumption and banning it would cause social unrest and distrust of the government. Check out “A Signal of Misunderstanding: The First Report of the National Commission on Marihuana and Drug Abuse”, a report from a commission created by Richard Nixon with the passage of the 1969 Narcotics Act.